Laying Out The Cards

The town quarter where we have slept sleep, some men at golf under umbrellas, the women upturning diamonds and hearts,

unto the babies a donation of constant things,

what is magic after all except the continuance that has no answers for itself

that it's begun is all, that there was a start, that a stranger, a man choosing between two forks of a road goes headlong off onto the highway of his own making

and what of paths, anyway, they just go and we're not sure they stop since that end produces a fresh choice.

If you wander to the left and I move my hand to the left I am taking the same journey and if I cry at the season when sadness calls for it and you pinch tears from your own eyes you are feeling the same sadness

and when the woman needing distraction plays the deck, and after the lay observes what the cards have turned, the resultant,

she sees a woman playing the deck and observing, and still hears the infant, still feels what's been there the while, the squeeze at her breast, that surprise, that unconditional.

.